Matt there must think we’re real stupid.
Someone pointed this out in another forum…
In the past year, they installed two leaders from game companies (Epic Games, of Rocket League and Fortnite fame, and Zynga, makers of Farmville) that are the poster children for enshittification and microtransactions. Will we be paying for Strava coins soon?
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I deleted all my Strava data and shut down my account after the last fiasco. I wasn’t going to let them set terms and conditions around data that I had recorded in another ecosystem and passed to them. Glad I did - and haven’t missed it a bit. Sounds like they are becoming more unstable every week!
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Ha! This is a fun read. Strava may well be on the road to enshitification.
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I’m not sure why I keep uploading to Strava, I could see my buddies rides without uploading mine and if I wanted to do my work challenge month (once a year we all upload and complete against each other for totals) I could manually upload walks/rides. I guess it’s almost intertia at this point.
This is all a bit of a shame and a missed opportunity in my view.
Strava currently has a globally dominant user base for a relatively unique ‘service’ provision (using the word service in its broadest term). This generates a humongous data set of very useful and tradable information, which if used right could be leveraged to help grow the business beyond its current limitations, making it more adaptable to future trends / emerging risks etc.
For example, they could have explored actually strengthening their partnership with another global giant in the same sector (like Garmin) and seek to double down on the USPs that have given them such popularity and growth over the years. This would diversify some of their risk and at the same time stabilise their current position.
Who knows what great (and useful) things could come from such a deeper collaborative partnership; with both organisations benefitting and customers also seeing great new features and options that make their activities (and how they record and manage them) more fun, informative etc.
For example, ease of use across platforms can be daunting for many non tech people, so improved flow and ease of use would be an obvious starting point for consideration? They wouldn’t need to exclude other players in the sector either (and risk anti-trust litigation. There are plenty of examples in other sectors of dominant players having working agreements that allow 3rd parties to interact and ‘play-nicely’ - all for the greater good.
Instead, the Strava leadership took the company knee deep into the widely reported ‘issues’ less than 12 months ago due to a misstep in how they treated 3rd parties using the data feeds ( which seemed to come completely out of the blue) and now this most recent public debacle, which for the most part appears to be criticised by pretty much everyone who’s commented, not just on this forum but also in the wider public domain, such as industry commentators / Reddit etc.
I really don’t get it? At face value it appears like one giant mistake after another? Maybe there is something else going on that a layperson like myself doesn’t comprehend that will lead to ultimate business success? If so I’d be intrigued to know what and how!! 
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“Why not today?” I thought. I’ve already made sure everything syncs with intervals in a way that doesn’t break if Strava is removed, so it made the decision a little easier…
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Might un-sync Garmin/Strava and see what Garmin live segments are like, without payment Strava is less useful these days as I rarely trouble the top ten so seeing progress is a few more steps!
Better look at my headunit for segment page now!
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Yeah if that happens I’m out. Guess I’m glad I did NOT get a job there (Cybersecurity/Privacy) if this is how the company is going to try to run.
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I see you can now turn off automatic sync of activities from Connect to Strava without completely disconnecting.
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I hate when mom and dad fight. I imagine Garmin plays a huge role in shuttling data into Strava that Strava then does stuff with. But Strava’s heat map, vs Garmin, are superior; the Weekly and Night heat maps they’re VERY easy to read because of how they’ve graded blue-vs-red (not as clear in other platforms including Garmin and rwgps):
Garmin heat map around Omiya Station - purple purple everywhere, but where to ride?
Strava Weekly heat map approximately in the same location as Garmin example above - I instantly see where people are riding.
Garmin’s map is difficult to see and doesn’t really tell me where people are riding regularly. Strava’s Weekly heat map is much more informative; I can confidently lay down a decent route myself first try. And then I load the route onto my Garmin and sync my ride from Garmin to Strava. Why do they have to fight?
Truth be told, I haven’t used rwgps for 8 months or so - perhaps they’ve updated the clarity of their heat maps?
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Given the constant stream of new features in Komoot since the bending spoons acquisition[+], I almost wish they’d acquired Strava instead: What's New | komoot
Based on the basis of the suit regarding the patents, not only will Strava lose the suit, but could very well have the patents invalidated, leaving Strava with very ittle IP of any value.. Very strange thing to do, especially. For a company trying to IPO.
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That group running Strava won’t stop doing stoopid stuff.
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The only thread I found about syncing with Ride With GPS is pretty old, but I pinged it with hope. I’ve used Strava for a long time, but giving them my money and data is feeling increasingly bad, in ways that seem totally unnecessary.
Suunto is also now suing Garmin:
The big loser here could be TR, I’d Garmin cuts off Strava. As TR relies on Strava as an intermediary
Ignore - brainfart 
Doesn’t TR have the option of direct feed from Garmin Connect? I know you can push TR workouts to Garmin.
I use Strava as the mother ship for my training data and I don’t plan to change any time soon. I couldn’t care less about them having a spat with Garmin. Most companies do a bunch of stupid stuff, silly lawsuits aren’t in the same league as things like unethical labor practices (which would steer me away from a company).
Our team and other local clubs use strava to organize rides and stay connected, it’s pretty engrained in the cycling ecosystem. Much like platforms like Facebook, Strava sucks in so many ways, but they have the numbers. The value of Strava as a company is the huge sticky user base, the platform is pretty meh.
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Strava, like Facebook relies on the network effect. As people leave in numbers the network effect also applies.
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The problem is, as long as there isn’t a new shared platform to share rides, segment PRs, etc on, most people won’t leave Strava behind. It’s a social network first and foremost, the fitness part is secondary. Without other means to boast your PRs, there will be no network effect. Facebook only really started declining once Snapchat came around
Some folks may cancel their subscriptions, but that’s likely the most impact there’ll be. And as long as Strava gets the data and can boast it’s extensive user base, it will sell both of them. What they are worth will be seen when they actually manage their IPO. And after IPO it’s phase 2 and 3 of enshitification anyway. That’ll be where it really becomes clear how strong of a platform Strava is.
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